“What do you like about each other?”
Manuel and Megan Maeso make eye contact and smile. While they seem a little nervous to talk about their science pursuits and research careers, they glow with pride when the topic turns to their partnership.
“She makes me laugh. Every day,” Manuel says. “She takes care of me — and the whole family. She makes me feel very loved.”
“Manuel radiates life and light. Even at 7 in the morning in the pouring rain he is energetic,” Megan says, chuckling.
And that’s exactly how these two UNC-Chapel Hill postdoctoral researchers met.
In the early hours of April 1, 2023, Megan entered a deluge as she headed to McCorkle Place for the UNC Science Expo, hosted each year by Morehead Planetarium and Science Center. She had volunteered to run a table for the UNC Postdoc Association to teach local kids and community members about proteins using a code-breaker game.
While preparing in the downpour, she was greeted by a peppy Manuel, a postdoc who had also volunteered to help. He was already wearing a science expo T-shirt, ready to go.
“I remember being drawn to how happy and positive he was. He just laughed all day, even though it was gloomy,” Megan says.
After that day, Manuel began inviting Megan to meet-ups with an international group of postdocs who had all started at Carolina that spring. Whether they’d go bowling or to trivia, Megan and Manuel would always end up in conversation, often laughing together.
Manuel and Megan pose in front of Morehead Planetarium and Science Center on their wedding day in October 2024. (photo by Abate Photo + Film)
“We were basically inseparable,” Megan shares. “We had very similar personality types, and our friends could tell that we were a match. There’s a saying in Spain that goes, ‘Eres mi media naranja,’ which means, ‘You’re my half orange.’ And the day Manuel told me that I knew we were going to get married.”
They wed in October 2024 and celebrated at the place that led to their meeting: Morehead Planetarium and Science Center. Wedding guests enjoyed a planetarium show of the night sky the day the couple met and then celebrated in the upstairs ballroom, which overflowed with candles, stars, and moons.
While their love story is based in astronomy, their research agendas focus on human and plant health. In the lab of Carolina geneticist Folami Ideraabdullah, Megan studies how environmental exposures affect human genes and drive disease. Manuel explores how plant immune systems identify pathogens in the lab of biologist Jeff Dangl.
“We have very different skill sets that complement each other,” Megan points out. “Manuel can run the coding to analyze huge data sets, and I do a lot of sequencing studies. We’re trying to figure out how we can bridge our two worlds in the future.”
The charismatic geneticist
Megan self-identifies as loud, charismatic, and extroverted. As a kid, she wanted to work in television, first as a Food Network chef and later as a broadcast journalist. But after applying to the journalism program at Elon University, she took an environmental science course at her high school and fell in love with the content.
“Forget about being an anchorwoman. I wanted to be a scientist,” she says. “I wanted to see where that career could take me.”
She made a last-minute pivot and applied to Appalachian State University (App State), where she was accepted into the environmental science program. She joined a hydrogeology lab and after spending months collecting data in local streams, and in all kinds of weather, she decided that maybe it wasn’t for her.
But what did interest her was how some of the atmospheric pollutants she was measuring affect human health. The researcher she was working with at the time suggested she explore toxicology, a field that unpacks how chemicals and other substances affect people, animals, and the environment.
“In a nutshell, it was everything I wanted,” she says. “It combines the environment with human health, which I was really passionate about.”
In 2015, she enrolled in the toxicology PhD program at NC State, where she researched how Vitamin D deficiency during adolescence affects the development of metabolic disease later in life. She continues to study this today with a focus on fatty liver disease as a postdoctoral researcher in the genetics department at Carolina.
Vitamin D helps with calcium absorption and bone health and regulates other cellular processes in the body. Previous research suggests it might reduce inflammation in the liver, and many people with liver disease experience Vitamin D deficiency.
“I’m very proud of where I am today. I can come up with my own ideas and hypotheses and design and perform the experiments. I train other people and have gotten a lot of feedback that I’m a strong mentor and teacher. That, to me, is the biggest accomplishment.”
The world traveler
The first time Manuel told Megan he was from Carolina, she thought he was making a joke. But then he elaborated: He grew up in La Carolina, Spain, a small town of about 15,000 people.
“He’s like a local celebrity,” says Megan, who smiles and looks at Manuel. “He’s traveled all over the world — and a lot of people never leave his hometown.”
From the time he was young, Manuel always had a passion for science. When he enrolled in university, he chose biology because of the diversity of the field and the many career options it offered.
Manuel proposed to Megan here in Córdoba, Spain, during a trip to meet his family in early 2024. (photo courtesy of the Maesos)
“In biology, you can study plants, you can study animals. You know about a little bit of everything,” he says.
After graduating with bachelor’s and master’s degrees from the Universidad de Jaén in Spain, Manuel wasn’t sure what kind of career he desired. So, he traveled across the country to figure it out. He spent some time working as a forestry technician and even taught biology to high school students for a year.
But he missed the lab. In 2018, he enrolled in a PhD program at the Institute for Sustainable Agriculture in Córdoba and began studying the microbiome of olive trees. More specifically, he was searching for a biological control to protect the trees from a pathogen that was infecting and killing them.
His program provided him with the opportunity to study different biological techniques all over the world. He spent a year traveling, living and working for three-month increments in Ireland, Germany, Belgium, and Brazil. And then, after graduating in early 2023, he finally made his way to the United States for a postdoctoral research position at Carolina.
Manuel continues to study plant-microbe interactions in the Dangl Lab. His research focuses on the molecular mechanisms that cause bacteria to either be pathogenic — infecting and killing the plant it lives upon — or commensal, when the plant is not affected.
Empaths and entrepreneurs
Manuel’s expertise in coding and bioinformatics combined with Megan’s lab skills and charisma suggest the makings of a future science company.
“Right now, our research doesn’t have any crossover. The thing about research is you might have a very niche topic, but the skill sets you’ve learned are very transferable,” Megan says. “So basically, how can we blend our transferable skill sets into an incredible idea?”
“Eventually, I would like to be the boss,” Manuel says with a laugh, echoing Megan’s sentiments. “To run a lab or a company.”
Sharing a passion for and understanding of research has strengthened their bond. Working in science can be rigorous and demanding — and having a teammate who can truly empathize with all that entails has been a blessing.
“I always dreamed about having a partner who understands what I do,” Manuel says.
“The understanding that we have with each other is unlike anything I had ever experienced in my former dating life, because some days are just extremely stressful,” Megan adds. “Experiments can weigh heavily on you, especially if they don’t turn out. And sometimes, I have to go in at 5 a.m. on a weekend because an experiment will take 10 hours.”
On those days, Megan and Manuel accompany one another to the lab for encouragement. It allows them to spend time together in the same space and encourages empathy and respect that neither experienced in previous relationships.
“While we come from different backgrounds with different languages, our communication is incredible,” Megan says. “And I think it’s because we don’t necessarily have to use words to communicate. We just understand each other.”